1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to the removal of gas from a liquid in which it has become entrained and particularly those applications in which a small quantity of gas must be removed from a liquid where it would be beneficial to have no gas present. Examples of application of this system are hydraulic systems and electrolyte management systems, systems in which a small quantity of gas can have highly undesirable effects.
2. Background Art
Cyclone or centrifugal separators have been used in many applications to separate one substance from another on the basis of mass, whether or not those substances are of the same or different physical states and particularly for the separation of fluids including separation of light liquids from heavy liquids and gases from liquids. Several devices in the prior art which are cylindrical or conical in shape can be described as being symmetrical about a vertical axis and have an inlet port near the top of the structure for the introduction, tangentially of the interior surface of the structure, of a fluid mixture, e.g., a liquid bearing an entrained gas and having two exit ports, one centrally located at the top of the structure for the lighter fluid, e.g., escaping gas, and the other at the bottom for the exit for the heavier, e.g., a degassed liquid. Schneible, U.S. Pat. No. 928,546, July 20, 1909, and Wiseman, U.S. Pat. No. 4,097,358, June 27, 1978, are examples of such basic configuration.
In some applications, valves of one type or another have been used for control of rates of flow, length of dwell time or pressure within a system or for other reasons. Examples of such structures are found in the density of valve 15 of Burnham, U.S. Pat. No. Re. 27,882, Jan. 15, 1974; pressure valve 8 of Schneible, U.S. Pat. No. 928,546, July 20, 1909; pressure valve 13 of Guyer et al., U.S. Pat. No. 2,955,916, Oct. 11, 1960; flow control valve 20 of Bearden et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,044,236, July 17, 1962; and back pressure device 33 and blower 40 of Booth et al., U.S. Pat. No. 3,828,524, Aug. 13, 1974. Of these control devices, the back pressure device 33 and the blower 40 of Booth et al. are pertinent to the present invention because they are directed to a control of the output of a separator for a purpose related to the content of the output.